The Systematic Character of the National Socialist
Policy for the Extermination of the Jews: Electronic Edition,
by Heinz Peter
Longerich

D. Pronouncements by Leading National Socialists on the Exterminations

1.While the regional mass murders were being effected in the autumn of 1941, the pronouncements of leading representatives of the regime which openly addressed the impending "anihilation" of the Jews, were becoming ever more frequent. At Hitler's "Table Talk" of 25 October, after having once again made reference to his "prophesy" of 30 January 1939, he made the following remarks:

This criminal race has the two million dead from the World War on its conscience, now again hundreds of thousands. No one can say to me: we can't send them in the morass! Who then cares about our people? It is good if the terror we are exterminating Jewry goes before us.274

2.In a lead article of the journal "Das Reich" of 16 November 1941, Goebbels returned to the subject of Hitler's prophesy of 30 January 1939 under the title "The Jews are to Blame" ("Die Juden sind schuld"):

We are now experiencing the fulfilment of this prophesy; and Jewry is inspired by a fate which, although hard is still more than deserved. Here compassion or regret is completely amiss.275

3.His formulation, that "World Jewry" is "now" succumbing to "a gradual process of extermination"276, made clear the fate which awaited the Jews who were being deported from the German cities for the past few weeks. Two days later, Rosenberg spoke at a press conference of the Ministry of the Eastern Territories of what was to come - the "eradication"of the Jews of Europe:

There are still about six million Jews in the East and this question can only be solved through a biological eradication of all of Jewry in Europe. The Jewish Question will only be solved for Germany, when the last Jew has left German territory; and for Europe, when there is no longer a Jew left standing on the European continent - up until the Urals [...] And for this it is necessary to push them over the Urals, or otherwise eradicate them.277

4.One day after declaring war on the USA, on 12 December, Hitler held a speech before the district (Gau) and Reich leaders) of the Party. Referring once more to his "prophesy" of 30 January 1939, he announced the "extermination" of Jews under German domination. This can be found in the Goebbels diaries:

As concerns the Jewish question, the Führer is determined to make a clean sweep. He had prophesied to the Jews that if they once again brought about a world war they would experience their own extermination. This was not just an empty phrase. The World War is there, the extermination of Jewry must be the necessary consequence. This question must be seen without sentimentality. We are not here in order to have sympathy with the Jews, rather we sympathise with our own German people. If the German people has now once again sacrificed as many as 160.000 dead in the Eastern campaign, then the authors of this bloody conflict must pay with their lives.278

5.Thus at the end of 1941, leading National Socialists were urging to extend the mass murders started in the occupied areas East and South East for the purpose of a general annihilation of the Jews.